A collection of short stories of rural Ireland in the classic Irish mode: full of love (and sex), melancholy and magic, bedecked in some of the most gorgeous prose being written today—from the author of the wildly acclaimed Night Boat to Tangier. With three novels and two short story collections published, Kevin Barry has steadily established his stature as one of the finest writers not just in Ireland but in the English language. All of his prodigious gifts of language, character, and setting in these eleven exquisite stories transport the reader to an Ireland both timeless and recognizably modern. Shot through with dark humor and the uncanny power of the primal and unchanging Irish landscape, the stories in That Old Country Music represent some of the finest fiction being written today.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jon Meacham helps us understand the present moment in American politics and life by looking back at critical times in our history when hope overcame division and fear. ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • The Christian Science Monitor • Southern Living Our current climate of partisan fury is not new, and in The Soul of America Meacham shows us how what Abraham Lincoln called the “better angels of our nature” have repeatedly won the day. Painting surprising portraits of Lincoln and other presidents, including Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and Lyndon B. Johnson, and illuminating the courage of such influential citizen activists as Martin Luther King, Jr., early suffragettes Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt, civil rights pioneers Rosa Parks and John Lewis, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and Army-McCarthy hearings lawyer Joseph N. Welch, Meacham brings vividly to life turning points in American history. He writes about the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the birth of the Lost Cause; the backlash against immigrants in the First World War and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s; the fight for women’s rights; the demagoguery of Huey Long and Father Coughlin and the isolationist work of America First in the years before World War II; the anti-Communist witch-hunts led by Senator Joseph McCarthy; and Lyndon Johnson’s crusade against Jim Crow. Each of these dramatic hours in our national life have been shaped by the contest to lead the country to look forward rather than back, to assert hope over fear—a struggle that continues even now. While the American story has not always—or even often—been heroic, we have been sustained by a belief in progress even in the gloomiest of times. In this inspiring book, Meacham reassures us, “The good news is that we have come through such darkness before”—as, time and again, Lincoln’s better angels have found a way to prevail. Praise for The Soul of America “Brilliant, fascinating, timely . . . With compelling narratives of past eras of strife and disenchantment, Meacham offers wisdom for our own time.”—Walter Isaacson “Gripping and inspiring, The Soul of America is Jon Meacham’s declaration of his faith in America.”—Newsday “Meacham gives readers a long-term perspective on American history and a reason to believe the soul of America is ultimately one of kindness and caring, not rancor and paranoia.”—USA Today

A riveting firsthand account of one man’s mission to investigate and document some of the most astonishing phenomena of our time—children who speak of past life memory and reincarnation. All across the globe, small children spontaneously speak of previous lives, beg to be taken “home,” pine for mothers and husbands and mistresses from another life, and know things that there seems to be no normal way for them to know. From the moment these children can talk, they speak of people and events from the past—not vague stories of centuries ago, but details of specific, identifiable individuals who may have died just months, weeks, or even hours before the birth of the child in question. For thirty-seven years, Dr. Ian Stevenson has traveled the world from Lebanon to suburban Virginia investigating and documenting more than two thousand of these past life memory cases. Now, his essentially unknown work is being brought to the mainstream by Tom Shroder, the first journalist to have the privilege of accompanying Dr. Stevenson in his fieldwork. Shroder follows Stevenson into the lives of children and families touched by this phenomenon, changing from skeptic to believer as he comes face-to-face with concrete evidence he cannot discount in this spellbinding and true story.

(Piano/Vocal/Guitar Artist Songbook). This songbook includes all 15 songs from the 2006 release, Jackson's first ever gospel album. Songs: Blessed Assurance * How Great Thou Art * I'll Fly Away * In the Garden * The Old Rugged Cross * Softly and Tenderly * What a Friend We Have in Jesus * and more.

Early '70s Radio focuses on the emergence of commercial music radio "formats," which refer to distinct musical genres aimed toward specific audiences. This formatting revolution took place in a period rife with heated politics, identity anxiety, large-scale disappointments and seemingly insoluble social problems. As industry professionals worked overtime to understand audiences and to generate formats, they also laid the groundwork for market segmentation. Audiences, meanwhile, approached these formats as safe havens wherein they could re-imagine and redefine key issues of identity. A fresh and accessible exercise in audience interpretation, Early '70s Radio is organized according to the era's five prominent formats and analyzes each of these in relation to their targeted demographics, including Top 40, "soft rock", album-oriented rock, soul and country. The book closes by making a case for the significance of early '70s formatting in light of commercial radio today.

After a terrifying nightmare, Joseph Paul Robinson wakes in the subway. But stations are named after places on the Monopoly board, all the station exits are blocked, and he's lost his memory. Eventually, he discovers that he is dead. After a bittersweet reunion with his deceased parents, he is left on his own in the Spiritual-Material Afterlife Rapid Transit (SMART) system to find his way to redemption or damnation. While following Joe, we meet others in this complex, fascinating and funny morality tale. There is Luscious "Mack" Brown, the sharecropper, facing a lynch mob in 1931. There is Tony Santini, the Korean War soldier facing his consequences in 1951. There is Effie Parker, the pure-hearted SMART Guide who died rescuing children from a fire in 1870. And there is Mortese the Stalker, a Demon seeking all the souls he can get. In this, his first novel, author Gerald Davis takes us on a ride into an imaginative exploration of the afterlife, inspired by modern accounts of near-death experiences. It is a highly readable parable addressing classic themes of good against evil, of faith, social responsibility, and the decline of American values.

This latest collection of Chicken Soup for the Soul comes to readers from the heartland, the Grand Ole Opry and the Contry Music Capital of the World. This treasury identifies the common threads that weave the tapestry of the human spirit- the traditions of family and faith at the heart of America.